Exit West is a contemporary novel written by Mohsin Hamid in 2017. The book narrates the story of Saeed and Nadia, a man and a woman with totally different personalities who are attracted to each other but, in the end, leave each other. Due to their distinct personalities, they have disagreements about many incidents on their journey, which eventually leads to their separation.

At the beginning of the book, Hamid introduces the differences between Saeed’s and Nadia’s habits and personalities. Saeed is a shy, calm, devoted man who lives with his parents, and Nadia is an independent, sensual, open woman who has left her family and lives in an apartment alone. At first, they seem to be attracted to each other due to how different and unfamiliar their feelings are for each other; they find the feeling novel since they never experienced it before. Thus, their relationship starts to develop: they secretly have rendezvous at Nadia’s apartment, and they become closer and closer. Despite that, they never marry and never have sex.

The start of their divergence appears when they have no choice but to leave their country, where there is constant war, and become refugees. They experience so much violence and difficulty along the way: being scared by the agent who later provides them with a way out, bargaining for food and supplies when they have few belongings left, and being found by police who attack them. Because of the cruelty of reality, they sometimes quarrel, but they also know that they cannot live without each other and are accustomed to being together. They have already experienced so much as an entity, and now their only way out is to persist in going forward and finding a place that accepts their existence.

This tension between them becomes more intense when they finally arrive at a house near London. As time goes on, the house is occupied by fewer and fewer people from other places, but more and more Nigerians. Nadia chooses to approach them and join their council, which grants Nadia and Saeed the opportunity to keep living in the house without being expelled like other non-Nigerians. However, Saeed feels no connection at all with the Nigerians. Instead, he finds himself becoming closer to the people in the house next door, who are from his hometown. There is a point at which Saeed wants to move out, but he and Nadia later compromise: they consider how the other house is much worse than their current one and decide not to go. This moment does not result in the breakup of the couple, but it obviously foreshadows that their relationship will diverge more and more.

Eventually, they part ways, each living in their own room and finding new lovers. When they reunite at the end, they do not seem to regret their decision to come together and then part. I think this is an inevitable result based on how different they are. They stay with each other only during the time of uncertainty, but once their lives become more stable, they find each other unsuitable. Overall, Exit West is a book I definitely recommend reading, as the story feels so real and the language is beautiful. From this book, I also gained insight into the lives of refugees and how hard it is for them to find a place where they can settle and be accepted.